According to a study released in today's MarketingFame, sales professionals find good PR more helpful in closing sales than marketing efforts. Interesting, considering my recent post about tracking leads via PR. Here's Madame Hollands brief on the subject:
Marketers -- if you want to really impress your sales department, perhaps the answer is adding more PR to the mix. Although this survey was conducted by a PR firm (who you might guess has some stake in the matter), we think the results are worth noting.
Turns out sales pros are much more likely than marketers to rate PR as being very helpful for shortening sales cycles, impressing prospects, and even generating new leads.
I'd love to hear the DG sales team's thoughts on this. Anthony, care to comment?
Here's the link to the MarketingSherpa report, BTW. Note that you'll have to pay for it after 1/31/05.
During my tenure at DigitalGrit, I have without question experienced the benefits of PR to our sales efforts. Prospecting has been made so much easier as the marketplace learns about the success we are having and the quality of new clients to our roster.
Although Interactive Marketing has grown tremendously over the last 12 months, there are still many companies that prefer to enter the pool at the shallow end. Reading about successful programs and a growing provider in the space, gives companies greater confidence. As a result, we are adding more and more clients to the roster and expanding programs to new levels.
And finally, let's not discount the power of name recognition. My sales team rarely has to answer the question, "Who is DigitalGrit and why have I not heard of you before?"
Thank you PR...
Posted by: Anthony P. Zarro | February 06, 2005 at 11:26 AM